When washing clothes, consumers often want the fabric to come out looking clean and having other benefits, such as freshness. Conventional detergents may not have the desired benefits that consumers want since they are designed to remove soils and stains from the fabric, and may not effectively deposit other benefit agents onto the fabrics. Cationic deposition polymers can be used to increase deposition efficiency of benefit agents onto fabrics. However, it has been found that conventional detergents that comprise traditional deposition polymers, which typically have a high molecular weight, do not clean or maintain whiteness benefits as well as conventional detergents that do not contain the cationic deposition polymers. Traditional cationic deposition polymers deposit not just benefit agents, but also soils from the wash water onto fabric, resulting in dingy fabrics and/or losses on stain removal benefits. For example, traditional cationic polymers can flocculate clay, since the cationic polymers interact with the anionic surfactants in the detergent, leading to clay re-deposition.
Another aspect to providing cleaning in the presence of polymer deposition aids is the use of enzymes. Commercially available enzymes may contain trace amounts of cellulase, up to 1% of the enzyme, even though cellulase is not the predominant or target enzyme in the enzyme mixture. Therefore, the detergent compositions of the present disclosure may comprise cellulase, for example at trace levels, such as present at levels of up to 0.005 wt %, by weight of the composition. Typically, cellulase is not compatible with cellulosic-/polysaccharide-based molecules, such as certain cationic polysaccharide polymers, such as cationic hydroxyethyl cellulose. If cellulase impurities are present, the cationic hydroxyethyl cellulose polymers are acted upon by the enzyme rendering them ineffective as deposition aids. Removing trace amounts of cellulase from protease mixtures to be compatible with cationic hydroxyethyl cellulose results in higher enzyme costs, and makes it difficult during processing to re-blend detergent compositions containing cellulase impurities with detergent compositions containing cationic hydroxyethyl cellulose to avoid waste.
Therefore, there is a need for a detergent that provides both good stain removal and good freshness benefits.